I had to be in Stockholm flying 22 January and warned the members of the panel I was supposed to be in as follows: The Netherlands is a funny country when it comes down to weather and airports. There are a few snowflakes predicted for tomorrow, and KLM is bracing itself for chaos. Having worked in Trondheim part time I know by experience that you can run airports under heavy winter conditions without disruptions, but apparently Schiphol hasn’t learned a lot yet from its Scandinavian neighbors (or finds the investment for preparing for such eventualities too expensive). Same with our railway system btw.
In the end it appeared Dutch railways had cut service in half, but anticipating that I was timely at the airport; flight was first 30 min delayed, then we had de-icing at the gate (we were told we were lucky since indeed being deiced at another platform would have delayed 1-2 hours) and the overall delay was 1 hour. Even though most of us here are armchair generals/non specialists I'd side with those who suggest this is incompetence or unwillingness to prepare properly for such situations. Snow levels were 1 cm or so...